Titanic: Honor and Glory
|composer = Anthony Caselena }} Titanic: Honor and Glory is a video game currently under development by Vintage Digital Revival, also known as Four Funnels Entertainment. The game will feature the most accurate digital representation of the [[RMS Titanic|RMS Titanic]] to date, as well as a model of the city of Southampton in 1912. The game is intended not only to be entertaining, but also a historical teaching tool, and a memorial to all those who lost their lives in the disaster. The project was originally funded through crowdfunding on such sites as Indiegogo. However, during a podcast on April 10, 2015, director Thomas Lynskey announced that the team would move away from crowd funding in order to focus more on the game's development. Gameplay The game's story focuses on a fictional 23-year-old American Oxford University graduate named Owen Robert Morgan. After being mistaken for an international criminal, he must board the [[RMS Titanic|RMS Titanic]] in an effort to clear his name and to find the real culprits. Once the player has boarded the ship, the player must perform certain tasks of a real crewman and secure a cabin of his own. Once the Titanic hits the iceberg, the player has 2 hours and 40 minutes to completely solve the mystery. There are three additional game modes planned to be included in the game. The most prominent is Tour Mode, which will allow the player to explore both the ship and the city of Greater Southampton at their leisure without the restrictions of Story Mode. The next mode, Simulator Mode, will give the player the opportunity to sail the RMS Titanic and possibly other ships on the open ocean, such as Titanic sister ships [[RMS Olympic|RMS Olympic]] and [[HMHS Britannic|HMHS Britannic]]. The last game mode planned is Multiplayer Mode which is still in the concept stage. It will include two sub-modes: Sinking Mode and Voyage Mode. The latter will allow players to experience the Titanic together. Deck games and passenger services will also be available. Plot Setting Titanic: Honor and Glory is set in April 1912 from the tenth to the eighteenth of the month or possibly even later to depict the arrival of RMS Carpathia in New York and the aftermath surrounding the eponymous disaster. Central to the story is the transatlantic maiden voyage of Titanic, while an explorable model of the city of Southampton is to be developed (with plans for Belfast, Northern Ireland and Queenstown (now called Cobh), Ireland; Cherbourg, France and New York City). Characters The sole player character is Owen Robert Morgan, who is fictional along with the antagonist for the game. Historical characters, mostly passengers and crew, are to be included. Those confirmed are Captain Edward John Smith, the officers, Thomas Andrews, J. Bruce Ismay, Margaret Brown, John Jacob Astor IV, Benjamin Guggenheim, Lawrence Beesley, Wallace Hartley and his orchestra, Masabumi Hosono, Joseph Laroche, Helen Churchill Candee, Violet Jessop, the Sage Family, Father Thomas Byles, August Wennerström, Harold Bride and the Guarantee Group. Development Development of the game began in November 2012, after the cancellation of the Titanic: Lost in the Darkness mod for Crysis 2. On December 25, 2012 the first preview of the game was released, showing a fly through of the Grand Staircase. At that time, the team was using CryEngine 3 to develop the game. Since then, the team has switched to using Unreal Engine 4 for development of the game. On March 7, 2015 the first preview of the game in Unreal Engine 4 was uploaded to YouTube. It showed an early sinking animation of the D-Deck Reception in close to real-time. On April 7, 2015, a playable walk-through demo was released, which featured a few select areas of the ship including the D-Deck Reception, Scotland Road, and the Turkish Bath. The numerous demos can be downloaded from the official homepage. On July 30, 2015, a podcast was held to provide updates on the project. During the podcast, several preview screenshots of the current state of the Grand Staircase were released. That same day, the official forums were launched. By the next day, however, the forums had been taken down for unknown reasons. As of January 1, 2016, the forums are still unavailable. In November 2015, game producers Thomas Lynskey and Matthew DeWinkeleer went on an 11-day research trip to England. Highlights of the trip included visiting the Grapes Pub in Southampton, which is to be depicted in the game, and measuring the wooden paneling of the [[RMS Olympic|RMS Olympic ]] original first class lounge which serves as the dining room of the White Swan Hotel in Alnwick. On April 14, 2016, the team uploaded a real-time animation video showing the sinking of the Titanic to their official YouTube channel to coincide with the 104th anniversary of the tragedy. That same evening, a live podcast was held in which the team commented on the video as they and the listeners watched it together. The video received coverage on many news websites. By the end of the month, the video had accumulated almost 7 million views and as of October 2019, the video has over 52 million views. The video has received an overall positive reception from historians and the public alike. Ken Marschall wrote a message to them expressing that, even as an artist and historian, he got a fresh perspective on the ship's sinking after watching their video during the podcast. On July 1, 2019, the team announced their partnership with "5518 Studios", a video game art-house, to develop the NPCs based on historical characters. One of the historical consultants of the game, Bill Sauder, also was a consultant on both the 1996 computer game Titanic: Adventure Out of Time and the 1997 film Titanic, as well as an expert panelist on National Geographic's 2012 television special Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron. In researching the project, the team would track down obscure artifacts or preserved pieces of Titanic s sister ship Olympic in order to ensure proper recreations. The team has made several discoveries during the course of the project that have been announced and released, including the layout of certain areas of the ship, the colors of different items, the order in which the events unfolded that night and the revelation of a different design in the windows between the first class dining and reception rooms. References External links * * * Category:MacOS games Category:RMS Titanic in fiction Category:Unreal Engine games Category:Video games with historical settings Category:Video games set in 1912 Category:Video games set in Southampton Category:Windows games Category:Naval video games Category:Upcoming video games Category:RMS Titanic in video games